SIGCHI Guidelines for Developing World

SIGCHI Guideline for Supporting HCI in Developing Worlds
(Amendment to the SIGCHI Policy for Development Fund)

V1.7 January 7, 2019

Purpose

With its mission to be a geographically inclusive global community, SIGCHI has been making efforts in developing worlds in Asia, Latin America, Africa and so forth to promote HCI development world-wide. SIGCHI recognizes that local communities in developing worlds have specific and often unique difficulties in developing HCI in their country/region. SIGCHI would like to invite the local communities to be a part of the SIGCHI family so that SIGCHI can better work together with local communities to jointly overcome these barriers. SIGCHI is providing financial resources through the SIGCHI Development Fund to support activities that are helpful for HCI in less developed regions and growing a worldwide SIGCHI community.

This guideline is an amendment and further specification to the SIGCHI Policy for Development Fund (https://sigchi.org/resources/sigchi-development-fund/) to highlight our commitment to and address the special needs in developing worlds. It serves as an outline for how the SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC) evaluates proposals to support the developing world (as part of its quarterly application process).

What to Support

SIGCHI supports activities that are in accordance with the above aims. In general, the activity should encourage mutual learning and connection between SIGCHI and local communities, help local communities network between each other and self-organize work on their own issues, help local communities to mature and become self-sustainable and get local communities more involved in SIGCHI activities. When considering supporting an activity, SIGCHI would like to see that it leads to establishing a relationship that is mutually beneficial to both parties and contributes to strengthening and expanding the SIGCHI community. When supporting an activity, SIGCHI would like to see its support as a kind of ‘seed’ and therefore expects to see clear reasons as to how it will help cultivate self-sustainability of the local community as SIGCHI will not provide long term continuing support.

Some examples of the proposals that have been successful in the past include:

  • Funding a regional workshop that leads to the formation of a SIGCHI local chapter in Indonesia
  • Funding a series of workshops to connect academia and industry in less developed regions in Brazil that helped expand the SIGCHI chapter in the country
  • Funding speakers to a workshop held in Beijing on HCI education in Asia that facilitates discussions on better delivering HCI courses and programs in the region and leads to a following up workshop on the same topic at CHI2015 in Seoul
  • Funding speakers from the SIGCHI community to attend the India HCI Conference that helps the local community and increases local awareness of SIGCHI
  • Funding winners of a student competition at a local conference to attend the student competition at CHI
  • Funding a get-together dinner for HCI professionals in Africa that initiated the formation of a local community intended to be affiliated to SIGCHI and an endeavor across Africa to found the inaugural pan-Africa conference – AfriCHI

All of these examples met the Development Fund funding criteria and included explicit discussion about the benefit to the SIGCHI membership and how that benefit would be communicated.

In general, the activities SIGCHI prefers to support include but are not limited to the following:

  • Events for community growth in a country or region
  • Funding travel for invited speakers from SIGCHI’s community at local events
  • Events for connecting different communities, which could be in the sense of geography, discipline or academics/industry etc.
  • Activities related to HCI education
  • Student volunteers at local events or SIGCHI sponsored events
  • Tutoring PhD students to present papers at SIGCHI sponsored events
  • Summer schools or mentoring activities
  • Scholarships for students that show promising development
  • Sending representatives (local leaders or students) from local communities to major SIGCHI events

For any SIGCHI supported activities, SIGCHI’s support should be acknowledged properly to the activity participants and in public by the local organizers. In the long term and in a way both parties feel comfortable, SIGCHI would expect the support to lead to establishing some stable mutual beneficial relationships with the local communities, which could be, but is not limited to, one or more of the following:

  • a series of regional events that has a stable in-cooperation status with SIGCHI, or may develop into a SIGCHI sponsored/co-sponsored event in the future (http://www.sigchi.org/conferences)
  • a regional community in SIGCHI Communities scheme (http://www.sigchi.org/communities)
  • a local SIGCHI chapter (http://www.sigchi.org/connect/local-sigs)

Procedure

Proposals for funding should follow the procedure outlined in the SIGCHI Development fund process (as part of its quarterly application process).
Generally this will be for the local communities to come up with proposal and to identify feasible activities, develop the ideas into proposals, and submit the proposals for consideration.

For the proposals where financial support is provided, SIGCHI will not provide upfront funds. The local organizers, after the activities, will need to follow ACM processes for reimbursement with receipts.

After the activities, the local organizers need to provide a brief summary report to the EC. The local organizers should disseminate the outcome in an appropriate format to the SIGCHI membership. Relevant examples include writing up a short article on the sponsored activities and the local community to be published in ACM Interactions magazine, or through publications or events at a major SIGCHI conference.

Appendix:

ACM SIGCHI Development Fund

Please follow this link for current details of the “SIGCHI Development Fund” program.

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